Hitting movie screens Jan. 18, “Mad Money” showcases a golden threesome of unlikely heist queens: Queen Latifah, Katie Holmes and Diane Keaton. In this comic thriller, mismatched sistas decide to rob the Federal Reserve of greenbacks already earmarked for shredding. Economically strapped, professionally stymied and just plain game for a good time, the heroes in “Money” decide to break out big-time.
Sound like a lighter-hearted version of the adventures of “Thelma & Louise” (1991)? It should: That film won “Money” director Callie Khouri a Best Screenplay Oscar. Back in the day, Ridley Scott’s road movie about accidental outlaws (Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis) hit a pop-culture nerve, triggering endless think pieces from feminist types and cautionary essays by the prim and proper.
Might be OK for charming brigands Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (Paul Newman, Robert Redford) to shoot up the Old West, then exit via a freeze frame, jumping off a cliff to land God knows where. But should Thelma and Louise get away with having a real good time while giving the finger to a passel of abusive studs — and the law? And weren’t these bad girls muscling into the All-Men’s Club by climaxing with their own leap of faith into nothingness?
Thelma and Louise and the “Mad Money” ladies come from a fine, old family line of cinematic outlaw queens — rebel sisters who rule, from comedy to film noir, crime-thriller to Western, and by all means grind-house exploitation movies. No matter the genre or budget, there’s always been retrograde titillation in watching high-riding women who command the reins in male enclaves get their comeuppance — usually through love, which can trip up the toughest cookie.
In the sexually conflicted 1950s, when women were either sex goddesses with pointy bazooms or stick-figure gamines with brains, a cluster of memorable Westerns celebrated entrepreneurial dames, hard as nails. Not by accident, they often starred onetime movie-star queens in their own 50s, fast becoming Hollywood outsiders.
In “Rancho Notorious” (1952), Marlene Dietrich plays Altar Keane, former dance-hall girl turned wealthy mistress of an outlaw haven. Her Western dominatrix struts about in tight pants and form-fitting flannel shirts but still cuts quite a figure in a fancy evening gown. Barking orders in her trademark bass pitch, the boss brooks no nonsense from her low-down guests. But she goes soft on a fellow (Arthur Kennedy) burning to avenge his fiancée, raped and murdered by one of Altar’s clients. This businesswoman on the wrong side of the law, her career alternatives nothing but ugly dead ends, dies for love — necessary sacrifice for the loss of society’s good girl, safely headed into marriage and a life of propriety.
“Johnny Guitar” (1954) features Joan Crawford as Vienna, another tough bar girl turned business visionary. Having built a saloon in the middle of nowhere, this formidable woman waits for the railroad to come by her front door. Crawford uses her hard, hard voice like a hammer — on the charming outlaw who wants a cut, the townspeople who can’t abide her uppitiness, and the prodigal Johnny Guitar, who once loved and left her.
Vienna’s opposite number is twitchy Emma Small (Mercedes McCambridge), a hysterical townswoman who dresses in preacherly black and almost literally burns with sexual jealousy of the arrogant saloonkeeper. Don’t look for anything like a catfight in this radical Western: These women face each other down with .45s.
“Forty Guns” (1957) pulls out all the stops: Jessica Drummond (Barbara Stanwyck) is the “high-ridin’ woman with a whip” who spurs her white stallion through the movie’s credit sequence, followed by a veritable army of gunfighters. This outrageous Western — full of visual and verbal sexual innuendo — is really a duel between two aging champions for the upper hand in their relationship, between the queen of this corner of the West and a shootist (Barry Sullivan) tired of killing.
In one remarkably modern scene, these duelists lie side-by-side in the shack where they’ve taken cover from a tornado. It’s clear they’ve just made love, and Jessica’s voice is very low, even confessional as she describes her hard life — punching cows at 9, midwifing the birth of her brother at 13, burying her mother afterward. It’s a moment of great resonance and authenticity, marking a certain kind of woman’s evolution into ruthless independence and appetite for power. Her lover has to shoot her, of course.
Such Westerns can be seen as cautionary parables, but the fact remains that they foreground strong, sympathetic heroes who often choose outlawry as the only way out of emotional and economic oppression.
There’s more than a hint of that theme in “Monster” (2003). Burying her beauty, Charlize Theron incarnated real-life killer Aileen Wuornos so powerfully that she earned an Oscar. None-too-bright and uneducated, Aileen uses her only resource, her flesh, to make a hooker’s living. The johns in “Monster” treat her like meat, and her growing rage feels justified, especially when one of these pervs almost kills her. Out on the dark roads where Wuornos once lay down for anything, vigilante retribution comes to men who hate woman-flesh even as they use it. Typically, this modern-day outlaw is brought low by love.
Are monsters like Wuornos depraved because they’re deprived? That psychological chestnut gets the acid treatment in “Marnie” (1964), one of Alfred Hitchcock’s most perverse plunges into the female psyche. Tippi Hedren, the ice queen who allegedly turned down the director’s advances, plays a shape-changing siren who seduces and steals from men. Sexually traumatized as a child, Marnie is turned on by getting her hands on men’s goods. In her world-view, “women are stupid and feeble, men are filthy pigs.” The cold blonde’s true love? A great black stallion she comes home to after every excursion into larceny.
What treatment does Hitchcock prescribe for Marnie? Supermacho Sean Connery, the rich, smart stud (named Rutland!) who traps and “tames” his exotic captive. This upscale outlaw must be brought down from her high horse — rape followed by a psychodrama at her mother’s knee ought to do the trick. Horrifying to contrast the confident con artist at the beginning of the film with the childlike, broken woman in the last scene of “Marnie.”
From the Netherlands, Marleen Gorris’ “A Question of Silence” (1982) raised feminist dust by suggesting that institutionalized oppression might drive sane women to murder. Far too schematic in its indictment of male chauvinists, “Question” still packs a weird wallop with its central dramatic moment.
In a small boutique, a supercilious twit folds merchandise while keeping a jaundiced eye on his customers. His whole demeanor broadcasts contempt for the species that buys his wares. Suddenly, one woman shoplifts a shirt, stuffing it in her purse without any attempt to hide what she’s up to. Looming over her, the twit grins with sadistic glee. Then several other shoppers ostentatiously snatch up items. The whole tableau, witnessed by a “chorus” of nonparticipants, freezes for a moment — then, wordlessly, almost ritually, the three impassive women beat the hapless shopkeeper to a pulp.
Cult classic “Switchblade Sisters” (1975) tackles similar questions of female free will and autonomy — within the context of street gang and sexploitation dynamics. In a sequence that looks forward to the Dutch film’s boutique murder, flat-eyed teen Amazons crowd into an elevator at every floor, silently surrounding then violently engulfing a greasy bill collector.
Auxiliary arm of the Silver Daggers gang, the Dagger Debs are headed by Lace, a baby-faced killer of considerable charm. Swaggering around in motorcycle gear, she’s slavishly in love with the gang leader. When a new gunfighter … I mean, girl … comes to town, gorgeous and deadly, Lace’s man rapes her to show his interest — and power begins to shift from Lace to Maggie. When the male Daggers turn out to be too cowardly to avenge their leader’s murder, Maggie allies the Debs with a Black Power girl gang to wage large-scale turf war.
The action in “Sisters” is brutal yet balletic, ranging from a knock-down, drag-out with prison matrons to a skating-rink ambush. In one extended, breathtaking action sequence, the two switchblade sisters slash it out all over a warehouse, until Maggie puts Lace down for good: “We’re not gonna be anyone’s Debs … we’re the Jezebels — immoral, impudent women!” It’s a feminist battle cry, sounded from within an infra-dig genre.
Easy to see why “Switchblade Sisters” turned Quentin Tarantino on — he re-released the film in 1996, under his Rolling Thunder aegis. These distaff outlaws are soul sisters of the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad in “Kill Bill.” Like Maggie, the Bride (Uma Thurman) in “Kill Bill” breaks with her sensei and gang lord, after he’s wiped out her whole life. Driven by revenge, this outlaw queen soldiers through hell, rising from the dead more than once to systematically execute her sister Vipers.
Tarantino has lovingly distilled a whole raft of movie warrior-women into one splendid hero: elegantly long-limbed and graceful in extreme action; cheekbones gaunted by coma, fury, terrible loss; often unrecognizable under layers of dirt and blood, Tarantino’s Amazon never deviates from her quest.
Not every femme outlaw has her reasons. Sometimes she’s just bad to the bone, an action junkie who lives to kill. The first shot of Faye Dunaway in “Bonnie and Clyde” (1967) zeroes in on her avid scarlet mouth, signaling sex, blood and conspicuous consumption.
In an earlier “Bonnie Parker Story” (1958), platinum-blond, pouty Dorothy Provine is a live wire, electrified by gun power: “No matter how dead they look, don’t stop firing until I say so.” Refusing to be a sexual doormat, the former diner waitress outguns a guy on the make, surrounds her bed with tacks. But, like her Western kin, this ’50s virago is brought low by a taste of sweet love.
Nothing can redeem Ma Baker (Shelley Winters) in “Bloody Mama” (1970). In a virulently ironic opening sequence, a little girl runs — in lyrical slow-mo — through sunlit woods. When her hillbilly dad and brothers catch up with her, they gang-rape the child, inspiring her fervent vow to breed boys of her own, who will “kill for me.” What follows is a sleazy, incestuous spree, as this amoral mama leads her unhinged brood deeper into lawlessness. Irony reasserts itself when a foursquare family man (Pat Hingle), whom the gang has kidnapped, “fathers” the boys into cutting the umbilical cord.
When 2000’s “Baise-moi” (aka “Rape Me”) was released in the United States, critics called it everything from unmitigated porn to a down-and-dirty feminist manifesto. What’s certain is that this hard-core French actioner refuses to prettify its characters and their outlaw trail. A slum-girl and a hooker, hardened by rape and other outrages, meet up, spark some mutual tenderness and take to the road — slaughtering at will.
Like “Bonnie and Clyde,” Manu and Nadine dream of elevating their bloody exploits into pop-culture significance: “We’ve got the moves … but no witty lines … we need dialogue to go with the moves.” And following the tradition of “Thelma & Louise,” they swear to end by “doing the jump without a bungee.” But these Gallic road agents just hit an existential dead end, living and dying without meaning.
No outlaw queen outshines Annie Laurie Starr (Peggy Cummins) in 1950’s “Gun Crazy.” She’s a quicksilver gunslinger who we, along with soon-to-be partner in crime Bart (John Dall), first encounter putting on a show in a carnival. Costumed in tight-fitting Western duds, her hip-slung gun belt emphasizing her curves, Annie Laurie handles her pistol with arrogant ease. Boldly eyeing a challenger up and down, she signals that shooting has everything to do with sex. Bart responds in kind, and their mutual skill instantly fires them up — they “look at each other like wild animals.”
Her dry, breathy little voice as flat as a bullet’s whine, Annie Laurie warns Bart she’s “bad” — “I’ve been kicked around all my life … now I’m gonna kick back!” These noir lovers are doomed, of course, but Annie Laurie’s feral energy, as addictive as “speed,” seduces you every moment they’re on the run. Her golden hair blows out around her skull as though electrified, as the lovers gun their car away from murders and robberies, down endless highways.
“Gun Crazy” (aka “Deadly Is the Female”) is pure outlaw poetry, a celebration of energy over morality. That’s the subversive vein that runs through many of these films: female energy so dangerous it can’t be contained by society’s straight and narrow — forcing it to bust out, go on the run … and die.
Kathleen Murphy, MSN Movies
The Daily Waffle 